White iPhone 4 Coming in Spring: Apple Executive

Apple will release the white iPhone 4 this spring, tweeted Apple executive Philip Schiller. Rumors of the smartphone have circulated for months.

Apple's white
iPhone 4 is apparently on track for a spring release, according to a Tweet from
Philip Schiller, the company's senior vice president of worldwide product
marketing.
In response to
a March 13 Tweet from one Eric Anderson-asking, "How do I get a white
iphone?"-Schiller (or someone using his verified account) Tweeted back: "Hi Eric. The white iPhone will be
available this spring (and it is a beauty!)."

The white iPhone
4 has become something of Apple's Moby Dick, a rarely seen beast that
nonetheless continues to draw the obsessed. In the face of officially unexplained
delays (and rumors of persistent manufacturing issues), its release date has
retreated ever further into the future.

If Schiller is
correct, and the white iPhone 4 makes its debut in late spring, the device will
have arrived nearly a year after the black iPhone 4's unveiling. Although the
latter remains a front-and-center part of Apple's product lineup, the option to
purchase a white iPhone 4 disappeared from the company's Website some time
ago.
In a Jan. 30 studio talk with Engadget, Apple
co-founder Steve Wozniak said he thought the white iPhone 4 would ship soon.
"They're going to become available," he told the audience, after repeatedly
suggesting that he had scarce information about Apple's inner workings. "All
indications from Verizon and GSM suppliers" are that "white iPhones are
coming."
Wozniak
himself had a white iPhone 4 on his person, apparently assembled from parts
ordered online. "It takes bad flash photos," he said. "The picture with flash
was like taken through cellophane."
In October, "a
source with connections at Apple" told the blog Cult of Mac that ambient light
leaked into the white iPhone 4's case, affecting its ability to take "accurate
pictures." Apple planned on delaying the device's release, the blog added,
until the camera sensor could be isolated from that ambient light.
The iPhone 4's
body incorporates two panes of chemically strengthened alumino-silicate glass,
rimmed by a stainless-steel antenna rim. Other sources have attributed the
smartphone's delay to issues with whitening the glass to the desired thickness
and opacity.
Even as Apple
apparently readies to launch the white iPhone 4, the rumor mills have churned
into high gear over details of the iPhone 5, expected to release this summer. According to alleged mold-engineering renderings posted on
iDealsChina.com, the upcoming device features a 4-inch screen within
a smartphone body the same size as the iPhone 4, a feat achieved by narrowing
the side bezels. Whether that design proves accurate, though, will have to wait
for either an actual leaked device or an official unveiling event.

Nicholas Kolakowski is a staff editor at eWEEK, covering Microsoft and other companies in the enterprise space, as well as evolving technology such as tablet PCs. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Playboy, WebMD, AARP the Magazine, AutoWeek, Washington City Paper, Trader Monthly, and Private Air. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.